If a man may have a plurality of wives, why may not a woman have a plurality of husbands? 

Because a woman’s heart is so constituted, that it is impossible for her to cherish a sincere love for more than one husband at the same time. 

It is even difficult for her to believe that a man can cherish a sincere and honest love for more than one woman at the same time.  It is difficult for her to believe it; for she cannot comprehend it. 

Her own instincts revolt against the thought of a plurality of husbands, and, judging his feeling by her own, she does not see how a man can want, or at least can truly love, a plurality of wives. 

But, as this point involves a constitutional difference of sex, it is one in which we must be aware that our feelings cannot guide us. 

A man can never know the infinite tenderness and the infinite patience of a mother’s love, except imperfectly, by reason and observation.  His experience does not teach him.  His paternal love does not exactly resemble it. 

So a woman can never know the purity and sincerity of a man’s conjugal love for a plurality of wives, except by similar observation and reason. 

Her conjugal love is unlike it.  Her love for one man exhausts and absorbs her whole conjugal nature: there is no room for more. 

If she ever receives the truth that his nature is capable of a plural love, she must attain it by the use of her reason, or admit upon the testimony of honest men.

It would be as impossible and as unnatural for a pure-minded, virtuous woman to have more than one husband, as for the earth to have more than one sun; but it is not unnatural or impossible for a pure and noble-minded man to cherish the most devoted for several wives at the same time:

It is as natural for him as it is for the sun to have several planets at the same time, each one dependent on him, and each one harmonious in her own sphere. 

To each planet the sun yields all the light and heat which she is capable of receiving, or which she would be capable of receiving, were she the only planet in the sky.  Not one planet nor two, nor all combined, are able to exhaust his power, or move him from his sphere. 

A similar relation exists, naturally, between the male and the female.  He is the sun, they are the planets.

An abridged excerpt taken from The History and Philosophy of Marriage; or, Polygamy and Monogamy Compared, by James Campbell.